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I think Bubble King makes the best skimmers. The build quality is second to none and they use the best pumps on the market. Their skimmers are incredibly efficient and practically silent. ATB's are a close second. Same pumps and same kind of quality.

I agree. High ends are good but not necessary better than the mid-tier skimmer. You're paying a lot for an incremental performance. If you established a good ecosystem with a balanced feeding schedule, you don't really need to spend a lot of money skimmer.

lets be realistic those high end skimmer like BK and ATB are really great skimmers and do run pretty much the best pump which is 75% of the cost of the skimmer but for a common hobbyist I would go with the of these company's Vertex,Reef Octopus, and Aqua Maxx. these three company's are great i have ran two of the 3 company skimmers and only seen multip Reef Octopus skimmers. In my option for best quality out of the three is the vertex. All Skimmers pretty much do the same thing IE your able to tune then to skim some dark ****.

so keep in mind for all you if you do decide to slap the money for one of those high end skimmers with a dragon pump i hope you get a warranty with it lol or some insurance because if that pump goes down lol your looking at the least 500 bucks to replace that bad boy

so keep in mind for all you if you do decide to slap the money for one of those high end skimmers with a dragon pump i hope you get a warranty with it lol or some insurance because if that pump goes down lol your looking at the least 500 bucks to replace that bad boy

I used to have a BK, once the pump went out, I couldn't find a replacement as the "dragon" pump is no longer in the market...

Another thing to consider it how easy it is to clean the skimmer cup. I had a WM K2 skimmer which was great skimmer but in order to take out the skimmer cup, I had to remove the silencer which was PIA/annoying after a while.
I have an ATB Elegance now and I really like it.